Category: posts

I suppose this should be reason to celebrate, or at least look pleased with myself, but let’s just stop a moment and examine the figures a little.

Out of those 1,000 followers, 150 of those are my Facebook friends.

Because that’s what WordPress does, it automatically adds them to your tally. No matter if they are all blog followers anyway, they add the lot. So lots have been counted twice.

So that takes out around 50.

And of the rest of my Facebook friends, a good half never, ever, visit my blog (fickle lot!).

So, another 50 gone. And we’re down to 900.

But out of those 900, there are a lot who have left the blogging scene completely. Without trawling through every one of them, it is fairly easy to take a random clutch of them (quite a large clutch, I must say) and go to see whether they are still active. It’s hardly a scientific method, but approximately one third have either disappeared completely, or haven’t posted for three months or more, leading me to suspect they’ve packed up.

So, down to about 600.

Of those 600, again looking at a few random clutches, after their initial contact and ‘follow’, I don’t think a good third ever came back again; they probably just hoped to get a follow back.

Down to about 400.

And out of those, about a third again don’t seem to have visited for at least a year.

So, I suspect the number of actual, active followers is close to 250, or a quarter of the ‘official’ figure.

But what does it matter, anyway? The point about posting is that someone should read what has been written, and then hopefully interact by commenting occasionally, or at least ‘liking’ now and again. It’s not compulsory, of course, but it would be odd if a regular visitor never did either. So as long as I get a decent number of regular readers who do interact with my posts, I’ll be a happy bunny.

On the other hand, if this post gets 1000 likes, I will eat my words.

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As I’m sure we all do, I frequently come across blog posts that I think are particularly interesting. Occasionally, though, I come across one I think is exceptional. I’ve been known to bookmark one or two and return to them several times, usually because they are about something that particularly interests me, but always because they are so well written and put together.

There are only so many blogs you can follow, and there must be thousands out there I’ve never heard of, but which I would follow instantly were I to come across them.

So the challenge I’m throwing out is if you have seen a post that you consider outstanding, please post the link in the comments thread so I can go and take a look. Anyone who follows me will have a vague idea of what I’m interested in, but if the post is that good, I might strike out and read something completely new to me!

The only rule I’m making is that the post must be by someone else, not one of your own.

My contribution to you is this post by bNomadic, a photo essay on the Mall Road in Mussoorie, a hill station in Northern India, which caught my attention since I hope to go there sometime next year.

Like this:

Bob has decided to go into journalism. Did I have any hints, he asked me? How should he go about it? In the end, I suggested he write a guest post for me.

‘What on?’ he asked.

Oh, I don’t know, I replied, possibly a little too casually. How about blogging?

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll do that.’

Over to you, Bob:

‘Right, so…why do we follow blogs? Obviously, it is so we can read the pearls of wisdom they scatter before us mere mortals. And if every post is a literary delight, then how much better would it be if we could get twice as many? Or three times? Or more? Everyone wants to read 20 new posts a day from their favourite blogger, all the more so if they receive email notifications of each one, as they get the added frisson of a ‘ping’ every few minutes as another notification arrives; an anticipation of the huge pleasure they will get when they read the new post!

‘Black print on a white background is so yesterday! Experiment with colours – green on blue, perhaps, or if you must use black, try it against a dark grey background. This ensures the reader gives your post the attention it deserves, rather than perhaps just scanning it quickly and moving on to something else.

‘But don’t stop there! Times New Roman and all that ilk are boring, boring, boring! Fonts such as Blackadder or Edwardian Script make it so much more fun! Again, your reader must work hard to prove how much they adore your posts if they are going to get to the point of posting any sort of relevant reply.

‘Size is everything. there is nothing better than a 4,000 word post to read because, let’s face it, your readers have nothing better to do with their time than read your post. After all, it’s probably the highlight of their day, so why skimp on their reading pleasure? Especially so if you have employed fonts and background colours similar to those mentioned above!